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In Thailand, crane accident kills 19 and injures 80 after it falls onto a train
Police said that a train derailed on Wednesday in northeastern Thailand after a crane fell?on to three of its carriages. At least 19 people were killed and about 80 injured. The accident occurred on Wednesday morning, in the Sikhio District of Nakhon Ratchasima Province, 230 kilometers (143 miles), northeast of Bangkok. It happened on a train from the capital heading for Ubon Ratchathani. The local police informed? Local police told? The team backed off for safety reasons after discovering that 19 bodies had been recovered. However, there were still some bodies inside the train carriages, which could not be removed because the crane began to move. In a press release, Transport Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said that there were 195 people on board. He also ordered an extensive investigation. He said that the victims were found in two of three carriages struck by the crane. The crane collapsed while working on a high speed rail project, and struck a passing train. This caused it to derail?and briefly catch blaze. The ministry shared images of carriages overturned near shrubland, and firefighters extinguishing an blaze while smoke billowed out. The elevated high-speed railway line is one of many under construction in Thailand. It was built above the existing rail track.
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US warns of urgent safety after two fatal crashes involving airbags
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an urgent alert to used car owners, buyers and repair shops on Tuesday after two more drivers died in crashes caused by unsafe Chinese airbag inflators which were likely illegally imported. Auto safety agency reported that it knew of 10 accidents involving ruptured replacement inflators manufactured in China by Jilin Province Detiannuo Automobile Safety System Co. Ltd. (also known as DTN) and likely illegally imported to the United States. NHTSA reported that eight drivers were killed in otherwise avoidable accidents, and two others suffered serious injuries after their original airbags had been replaced by substandard ones. NHTSA stated that the airbag inflators?DTN malfunctioned during crashes, "sending large metallic fragments into driver's chests, necks and eyes." NHTSA opened an investigation in October into DTN replacement airbags following?eight crashes resulting in six deaths. NHTSA has partnered with law enforcement agencies in order to investigate any illegal activities related to the importation of DTN replacement inflators. NHTSA could not confirm that the risks are limited to these models or makes, but all of the replacement airbags in fatal crashes were installed on used Chevrolet Malibu and Hyundai Sonata cars. Hyundai Motor expressed concern over reports that counterfeit airbag inflators were installed as replacement parts on three older Sonata cars. Hyundai said that these 'dangerous' components were not authorized or supplied by the company and were installed on vehicles with salvaged titles or rebuilt titles. "Protecting customers is our number one priority. We 'fully support NHTSA in its ongoing efforts to identify counterfeit inflators." General Motors, the maker of Chevrolets, declined to comment. DTN likewise did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comment. NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison stated that the agency is focused on the industry and the consumers. The agency issued an alert to auto repair industries to be on the lookout and to notify NHTSA as soon as they have any information regarding these inflators. As DTN acknowledged on its site, inflators were prohibited in the United States. NHTSA stated that whoever is bringing these inflators into the country and installing then is putting American family members at risk. If you are buying a used vehicle that was involved in an accident where the airbag deployed, inspect it immediately to make sure the replacement air bag is equivalent to the original. (Reporting and editing by Franklin Paul, Nick Zieminski, and David Shepardson from Washington)
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Officials say that a drone attack in Ukraine has ignited an industrial fire in Rostov-on Don, Russia.
Regional officials reported on Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack on Rostov-on-Don overnight resulted in?two fires, four injuries and damage to apartment buildings. Yuri Slyusar is the governor of Russia's Rostov Region. He said that four people were injured, including a child aged four, when debris from?fallen drones damaged their apartment. Rostov-on Don is the administrative centre of Rostov Region. Slyusar, a Telegram user, said that all the injured were hospitalized. He refused to say which industrial facility was on fire, but said that one of the blazes had been extinguished and the other contained by Wednesday morning. Aleksandr Skryabin said that temporary housing was provided for families displaced from damaged apartments. It was not possible to determine the full impact of this attack immediately. Ukraine has not commented on the attack. Ukraine used drones against targets in Russia. They claim that such attacks are meant to weaken Moscow's energy and military infrastructure, and to respond to Russia's ongoing strikes on Ukrainian cities. The war Moscow was launched nearly four years ago. Rostov on Don, a major transport and logistic hub near Ukraine, is home to key military headquarters, and it's also a centre of operations for Moscow. Drones are increasingly targeting this area. (Reporting and editing by Tom Hogue in Melbourne, and Thomas Derpinghaus.)
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US withdraws appeal of order blocking Trump's plan to tie state transport funds to immigration enforcement
The U.S. Justice Department asked on Tuesday a federal appeals?court to dismiss its appeal against a lower court order that blocked President Donald Trump from requiring 20?Democratic?states?to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollar's worth of grant funding for transportation. A U.S. Judge in Rhode Island decided that the U.S. Department of Transportation did not have the authority to force the states to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for transportation funding and that the condition was against the U.S. Constitution. California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the legal challenge which included also the District of Columbia. He said that the "Trump Administration tried to use vital transportation funds as a 'bargaining chip' for its political agenda." He pointed out that California receives billions in federal funding for transportation every year. Bonta said he was "pleased" that the Trump Administration had accepted defeat and dropped its appeal. California "is not playing around when it comes vital transportation dollars which support our public infrastructure and we will continue to take the President to court every time he uses federal funding to bully communities." Last year, the judge found that USDOT did not provide any plausible link between cooperating with immigration and the purposes Congress intended for funding highways, bridges, and other transportation projects. USDOT declined to comment immediately on Tuesday. USDOT withheld $160 million from California last week for failing to cancel 17,000 commercial driver's licences issued by non-U.S. nationals. California has said that it fully complies with federal and state regulations. A spokesperson for the state said this. They also strongly disagree with the decision of the 'federal government to withhold funding vital for transportation in California. California filed a lawsuit against USDOT last month for withholding federal funding of more than $33 million dollars because USDOT claimed that the state had not met rules requiring English language proficiency for truckers. California dropped its separate lawsuit in December, which it filed in response to USDOT's revocation of $4 billion in funding for high-speed rail. (Reporting and editing by Tom Hogue, Christopher Cushing, and David Shepardson from Washington)
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Claudette Colvin, a pioneer in civil rights for the United States, has died at 86.
Claudette Colvin died at the age of 86. She was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama at 15 years old for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a 'white woman.' This happened nine months before Rosa Parks committed a similar, but arguably more famous act of defiance. Colvin was a relatively unknown figure in the civil right movement, but her act of rebellion in 1955 inspired Parks and other activists and formed the basis of the federal lawsuit which outlawed segregation on U.S. public transport. Ashley Roseboro confirmed her death in hospice care, Texas, as a spokesperson for the Claudette Colvin Foundation and her family. In one of the earliest publicized acts against Jim Crow laws governing city bus seats by race in Montgomery,?Colvin refused her seat to a white woman as ordered by the bus driver and remained seated until she was dragged from the bus by police. Colvin, in her court testimony, recalled that she studied anti-slavery abolitionists in school and felt she had Harriet Tubman on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth the other. "History had me glued on the seat," she said. Parks, a?seamstress older than Parks who was the secretary of the local NAACP, was seen by many as a dignified and sympathetic figure. She was viewed as the ideal person to rally around as civil rights leaders planned what would become the year-long boycott of buses that propelled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was thrust onto the national stage. Roseboro says that in the months leading up to the boycott which began in December 1955, civil rights leaders were concerned about the "colorism" of Colvin, who was from a lower class background and had lighter skin than Parks. They also feared the teenager would be a bad representative for the movement. Around a year after being arrested, she became pregnant from a man she had met in an encounter she described later as statutory rape. Colvin was one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, a lawsuit that challenged the Jim Crow policies on city buses. The case led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1956 that declared segregation on public transportation unconstitutional. Colvin lived in obscurity for many decades, as she worked as a nurse's assistant and caregiver, and struggled as a single mother. However, historians have brought to light her pivotal role in the early civil right movement. Fred Gray is the lawyer behind Browder. Gayle credited Colvin for helping ignite the fight against segregation. "I'm not trying to belittle Mrs. Parks but Claudette's courage gave us all the motivation to act as we did, Gray told the Washington Post. Roseboro stated that Colvin has been able to expunge her juvenile arrest record in recent years.
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According to the military, a Russian drone attack caused power cuts in Ukraine's Kryvyi Rih.
Oleksandr vilkul, the head of the military administration, said that Russian drones had struck Kryvyi rih in central Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing power outages for over?45,000 people and disrupting heat supply. If you can, please charge your mobile devices and fill up with water. Vilkul told Telegram users that it was going to be a difficult day. The water pumping stations in the system could have pressure problems. It was not possible to determine the exact scale of 'the attack immediately. Russia has not commented on the?strike. Russia repeatedly attacked Ukraine's power plants, substations, and transmission lines with drones and missiles to disrupt electricity, heating, and industry in the four-year conflict. Kyiv claims that the campaign has caused rolling outages in cities throughout the country. Repair crews are working under fire, and Ukraine is relying on electricity imports and air defences to stabilize the grid. Kryvyi Rih is a steel and mining hub in the Dnipropetrovsk Region and home to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Strikes have repeatedly killed civilians, damaged homes and industries, and caused other damage. It is close enough to the southern frontlines to be within striking distance, and its factories, logistic links, and workforce make it a vital rear-area support centre for Ukraine's war efforts. (Reporting and editing by Stephen Coates in Melbourne, Lidia Kelly from Melbourne)
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UK commits 45 billion pounds rail project in Northern England
Britain committed Tuesday to a new rail-infrastructure programme for the North of England worth up to 60 billion pounds (45 billion pounds), a region that has been held back by a lack of investment. The government pledged that it would deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail over three phases. Then, a new rail line will run between Liverpool and Manchester via Manchester Airport. Finally, improved connections will be made between Manchester and Yorkshire. The OECD has identified outdated and insufficient transport links as a major factor in the productivity gap between British cities outside of the capital. Rail lines in the north of England, which is home to three out of the five largest metropolitan areas, are plagued with bottlenecks that date back to Victorian times. The Labour Government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which is far behind the Reform Party UK on the right in the 'opinion polls', has stated that reducing the regional?inequality? between London and the remainder of the UK, is a priority. Investment and renewal are the answer to the economic growth challenge. "We are reversing decades of chronic underinvestment" in the North, said Finance Minister Rachel Reeves. The majority of the expenditure - which is capped at 45 billion pound in constant price - will occur in 'the 2030s and '2040s. No dates will be set for the opening of the high-speed rail system. This is a lesson learned from the HS2 project, which was cut short due to soaring costs. Rishi Sunak was the Conservative Prime Minister at the time. He canceled the northern leg of the HS2 project in October 2023 because costs were soaring and infrastructure watchdogs warned that Britain had a fundamental issue with its?ability? to manage large projects. The government announced on Tuesday that it 'intended' to build a new rail line between Manchester and Birmingham, the central English city after Northern Powerhouse Rail was completed. However, it would not constitute a reintroduction of previous HS2 plans. It said that it had learned from the failures of HS2, which will now only run between London and slightly to the north of Birmingham, and open some time beyond the original 2033 target date. Reporting by Andy Bruce, Editing by Alison Williams. $1 = 0.7448 pounds
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CANADA-CRUDE-Discount on Western Canada Select widens slightly
The difference between the West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures and North American benchmark West Canada Select crude oil has widened slightly on Tuesday. WCS for Hardisty, Alberta delivery in February settled at $14.40 per barrel below WTI benchmark, according to brokerage firm?CalRock. This compares with $14.35 on Monday. The discount on Canadian Heavy Crude?remains a dollar or more wider than last month. The market is watching for the potential for an increase in Venezuelan heavy oil barrels in the U.S. Gulf Coast to compete against Canadian heavy oil of similar quality over the long term. Some analysts believe the market has overreacted because it will be years before Venezuela can significantly increase its oil production. Oil prices jumped?by over 2% on Tuesday, as the 'prospect of disruptions in Iranian crude exports trumped possible increases from Venezuela. (Reporting from Amanda Stephenson, Calgary; Editing and proofreading by Cynthia Osterman).
Georgia's new nuclear plants drive United States power sector clean-up: Maguire
New nuclear power plants in Georgia have actually assisted flip the state's power mix so that electricity from tidy energy sources has gone beyond nonrenewable fuel source electrical energy output for the first time.
Georgia's greater nuclear generation has in turn helped to slash the carbon intensity of power generation within the Southern Providers power system, which produces electrical energy and power for most of Georgia, Alabama and parts of Mississippi.
The generation mix reversal and drop in power emissions demonstrate the impact that a broadened nuclear fleet can have on energy systems, regardless of the considerable expense overruns and construction delays that beset the Georgia reactors.
VERY LONG TIME COMING
The Vogtle Electric Getting Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia is the largest nuclear plant in the United States, with a power producing capability of 4,536 megawatts (MW).
The very first 2 reactor systems went into production in the late 1980's, and between 2012 and 2022 generated around 27% of Georgia's electricity, according to information from Coal.
Since the beginning of 2023, that nuclear generation share has climbed to 30% thanks to the start-up of the final two reactors at the Vogtle website.
Initial building on the last 2 reactors - Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 - started in 2009, and were originally slated to expense around $14 billion, according to a Vogtle Construction Monitoring report.
However, a series of development hold-ups and enormous cost overruns indicated the last reactors just got in production within the last 18 months, nearly 15 years after task beginning.
The last costs for systems 3 and 4 was over $35 billion, according to a report titled Plant Vogtle: The True Expense of Nuclear Power in the U.S., issued this year by a group of Georgia consumer supporters.
The report's authors claim that the final expense of electricity created by the Vogtle reactors will be $10,784 per kilowatt hour (KWh), which would make it the most expensive electrical energy worldwide.
In contrast, electricity produced from wind farms, solar jobs and natural gas-fired plants varies from $1,000 to $ 1,500 per KWh, the report added.
UP AND RUNNING
Leaving the cost problem aside, the effect of the now completely functional Vogtle plant is beginning to emerge.
From 2018 through 2022, the Vogtle website created an average of 2,813 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electrical energy a month for the state of Georgia, around 27% of total state electricity materials according to Ember.
Because Vogtle 3 began operations in April 2023, that generation overall rose to approximately around 3,500 GWh a month, and climbed to over 4,600 GWh in May 2024, when Vogtle 4 initially began running.
CHANGING MIX
The dramatically higher production from atomic power plants has affected Georgia's electrical energy mix in several crucial methods.
To start with, the share of generation from nuclear reactors leapt to 37% in May - a complete 10 portion point above the long-term average - as the Vogtle 4 plant came online.
Second of all, the state's overall electrical power generation overall climbed to new highs as more nuclear generation was added to the output from other sources.
Throughout the January to May period, Georgia's overall electricity generation was 55,634 GWh, which was a record for that period and marked a 12.3% jump from the exact same months in 2023, Ash data shows.
Finally, the higher level of nuclear generation likewise increased Georgia's overall clean electricity output levels, which surpassed generation from the state's fossil fuel properties throughout March, April and May of this year for the very first time on record.
Tidy power's share of the Georgia generation mix was a. record 47% for the January to May period, and compares to 41.5%. during the same months a year back.
Continual output from Vogtle 3 and 4 over the rest of. 2024 might assist push the clean power share of the general mix. closer to 50%.
LARGER IMPACT
Vogtle's complete ramp-up was also apparent farther afield, with. the carbon strength of power production of the Southern Company. Providers power system visiting 14% up until now in 2024 from 2023's. average levels.
Roughly 427 grams of carbon dioxide were released by the. Southern power system for every single kilowatt hour of electrical power. produced up until now in 2024, according to Electricitymaps.com.
That carbon intensity compares to 440 grams of CO2/KWh in. 2023, and 467 g/CO2/KWh in 2022.
For Georgia's power customers, the steep decrease in. emissions per system of electricity, in addition to greater overall. electrical energy products, are a favourable result of the conclusion. of the Vogtle site.
And over the longer term, rising amounts of clean power. might become a more significant aspect of the energy sector than. the last expense of any specific generation property.
<< The opinions revealed here are those of the author, a. columnist .>
(source: Reuters)